A month on the Farm

by Libby and Lisa Buchanan

As we write this, we are heading into the big heatwave. The priority is to ensure the cattle are in the best fields for shade. Although the grass has stopped growing and much of it feels crinkly under foot, they are not hungry. Sussex cattle do well in these conditions – there are huge numbers in Africa and Australia for this very reason – but it will still be a shock to their system.

Six of our seven girls who are calving out of season have done so and one of the calves is a stunning bull of whom we have great hopes. He is beautiful - tall and long with some lovely double-muscling around his back end. We hope to have three to rear for breeding from this year’s crop of calves, which should earn us good money in 18 months.

This is our second year in the East Sussex Badger Vaccination Programme. Tb is a desperate problem, as we know only too well. To see beautiful, apparently healthy cattle taken for slaughter is utterly soul-destroying. Equally, no-one wants sick badgers. Culling badgers has been used successfully to reduce the incidence of Tb in some areas, but no-one wants either badgers or cattle culled. So a new strategy is being trialled in East Sussex to vaccinate the badgers against Tb and we are part of it. It is quite involved! First, you have to survey your land to find the setts and runs. Then for a week you put handfuls of peanuts into small holes on the runs (the badgers get very fat!). Then the experts come with traps every day, placing them ever nearer to the nuts, finally putting the nuts into set traps. At 5 a.m. on the following two mornings, the qualified vaccinator injects any caught badgers, sprays them with a marker (to avoid double dosing) and then releases them. Welfare of the badgers is uppermost. Last year, we vaccinated five and I hope we will do even better this year. It such a good feeling to be able to do something positive to overcome this desperate problem. And if we can keep the badgers healthy too, then it really is a win:win. We are promised a vaccination for cattle one day, which would be terrific.

We are pleased to report we passed our annual organic inspection this month. Phew! We are also in the middle of measuring the farm’s carbon footprint so we can reach net zero as soon as we can. We have also had a natural capital survey done to see what more we can do to farm with Nature. (May we boast for a moment and say the experts who did it were very complimentary about all we have done so far?) And we are developing some really exciting plans to farm even more regeneratively. More on this next month, but our hearts are pumping quite fast right now!

Rudyard Kipling was an ardent admirer of Sussex cattle and he owned a small herd. He immortalised the breed in his poem, from which we at Black Ven are delighted to quote, “Alnascher and the Oxen”

There's a pasture in a valley where the hanging woods divide,
And a Herd lies down and ruminates in peace;
Where the pheasant rules the nooning, and the owl the twilight tide, And the war-cries of our world die out and cease.
Here I cast aside the burden that each weary week-day brings And, delivered from the shadows I pursue,
On peaceful, postless, Sabbaths I consider Weighty Things
Such as Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew!

To a luscious sound of tearing, where the clovered herbage rips,
Level-backed and level-bellied watch 'em move.
See those shoulders, guess that heart-girth, praise those loins, admire those hips,
And the tail set low for flesh to make above!
Count the broad unblemished muzzles, test the kindly mellow skin
And, where yon heifer lifts her head at call,
Mark the bosom's just abundance 'neath the gay and cleancut chin,
And those eyes of Juno, overlooking all!

Here is colour, form and substance, I will put it to the proof And, next season, in my lodges shall be born
Some very Bull of Mithras, flawless from his agate hoof
To his even-branching ivory, dusk-tipped horn.
He shall mate with block-square virgins - kings shall seek his like in vain, While I multiply his stock a thousandfold,
Till an hungry world extol me, builder of a lofty strain
That turns one standard ton at two years old.

There's a valley, under oakwood, where a man may dream his dream,
In the milky breath of cattle laid at ease,
Till the moon o'ertops the alders, and her image chills the stream,
And the river-mist runs silver round their knees!
Now the footpaths fade and vanish; now the ferny clumps deceive;
Now the hedgerow-folk possess their fields anew;
Now the Herd is lost in darkness, and I bless them as I leave,
My Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew!